Program Title: Regional Development, Population Trend, and Technology
Change Impacts on Future Air Pollution Emissions

Synopsis of Program:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of its
Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, is seeking applications
for research into the changes in the spatial distribution of
air pollution emissions due to regional development patterns,
including
demographic determinants, and technology changes.

Eligibility Information:
Academic and not-for-profit institutions located in the
U.S., and state, tribal, or local governments are eligible
to apply
for assistance
under this program.

Award Information:
Anticipated Type of Award: Grant
Estimated Number of Awards: Approximately 4
Anticipated Funding Amount: Approximately $3 million
Potential Funding per Award per Year: Up to $250,000
per year for up to 3 years
Limitations: Requests over $750,000 total will not
be considered

Sorting Code(s):
The sorting code for applications submitted in response
to this solicitation is 2004-STAR-B1.
Deadline/Target Dates:
Letter of Intent Due Date(s): None
Application Proposal Due Date(s): February 5, 2004

INTRODUCTION

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Research and
Development, National Center for Environmental Research (NCER)
announces an extramural funding competition supporting research
into regional development, population trend, and technology change
impacts on future air pollution emissions. EPA is interested
in analysis of how pollutant emissions related to tropospheric
ozone and particulate matter formation may be altered by future
changes.

The location and design of new development can affect the level
of impact it has on the environment. For example, the physical
characteristics and patterns of land development in a region can
affect air quality by influencing travel mode choices, trips, trip
speed, number of miles driven, and therefore mobile source emissions.
Characteristics of urban form that have been found to affect trip
making include: density, mix of land uses, transit accessibility,
pedestrian environment/urban design factors, and regional patterns
of compactness with a jobs/housing balance (e.g. US EPA, 2001).
There is also increasing interest in developing "smart growth" strategies
(e.g., compact, mixed-use development with a variety of transportation
options and pedestrian-oriented urban form) in order to improve
air quality by reducing overall auto-related emissions.

Emissions from stationary air pollution sources, such as power
plants and factories, will also be affected by the characteristics
and patterns of land development. In addition, economic growth,
changes in the composition of economic output (GDP), and technological
change have the potential to affect both the total amount and
spatial distribution of stationary source emissions. Economic
growth is
unlikely to proceed at the same rate in all locations across
the US. Increases in activity in the services sector, decreases
in
manufacturing, and other sector changes are unlikely to be geographically
uniform and as these sectors have differing emissions characteristics,
the spatial pattern of emissions is likely to change. Similarly,
changes in the spatial organization of production and the diffusion
of new and improved technologies over time will have consequences
for the amount and spatial distribution of emissions.

An important feature of this research is the long time frame
(25 to 50 years) involved when considering global change. In
general,
the current tools used to estimate emissions do not have the
capability to capture such long-term changes. For example,
it is entirely
reasonable when estimating next year's emissions to assume
that communities, roads, factories, and trees will be in the
same
locations and look much the same as they do today. However,
50 years from
now this assumption is unlikely to hold true. As a result,
it is necessary to either develop new or augment existing models
to project
emissions. A key goal of this research is improved methods
to
allocate emissions spatially. Methods are needed to allow the
spatial allocation
algorithms to change over time in response to movements of
economic activities, communities, and roads.

BACKGROUND

This Request for Applications (RFA) complements global change research
programs in EPA Laboratories and Centers as well as the objectives
of the EPA Office of Air and Radiation relating to regional air
quality. The overall framework for assessing the potential consequences
of global changes on air quality in this RFA is the Global Change
Research Strategy (http://www.epa.gov/research/htm/researchstrategies.htm).

EPA's Global Change Research Program (http://www.epa.gov/globalresearch/)
is assessing the potential consequences of global changes for human
health, ecosystems, and social well being in the United States.
The Program focuses on four major areas consistent with EPA’s
mission: human health, aquatic ecosystems, water quality and air
quality.

Improving our understanding of linkages between climate, atmospheric
chemistry, and global air quality and our ability to assess future
states of the atmosphere will require coupling local- and regional-scale
air quality models with global-scale climate and chemistry models.
At the same time, there is an ongoing need to improve our understanding
of how meteorology affects specific processes. The research solicited
through this RFA will improve our knowledge and methods for projecting
regional emissions.

SPECIFIC AREAS OF INTEREST

In order to develop more accurate long-term (e.g., to 2050) emissions
projections, current energy modeling systems on which aggregate
forecasts of emissions are based will need to incorporate or develop
better methods to project changes in a wide range of key driver
and policy variables. Examples of such changes include transportation
infrastructure investments, regional development patterns (e.g.,
sprawl, Smart Growth), structural and spatial shifts in the organization
of production and delivery of services, transportation modal choices
(and other lifestyle factors), air quality and climate policies,
and population movements, in addition to technological change.
Furthermore, methodologies will need to be developed to spatially
distribute the emissions resulting from these kinds of inputs across
North America.

The spatial and temporal distribution of transportation activities
and emissions are of key concern. For example, regional development
patterns (housing, roads, commercial development, mass transit
systems) will likely be heterogeneous across the country, affecting
both the amount and spatial distribution of air pollution emissions
from mobile sources. Similarly, improved automobile engines will
likely diffuse into the nation's fleet over time and will penetrate
faster in some areas than in others. Understanding the process
of technological diffusion will improve our ability to estimate
air pollutant emissions.

Successful proposals for this solicitation will address one or
more of the following research topics:

How would population growth, urban-rural population
shifts, the use of smart growth approaches, and climate change
affect the spatial
distribution and amount of air pollution emissions?

How would technological change (including the rate
of both technological change and diffusion) affect the amount
and spatial allocation
of anthropogenic emissions? What is the impact of changes
in the mix of energy production technologies (nuclear, coal,
gas, wind
and other renewable energy sources) on the spatial allocation
of anthropogenic emissions?

How would changes in sectors of the economy, for example
shifts within and between manufacturing, service, and agriculture
sectors,
affect the amount and spatial distribution of air pollution
emissions? Could climate change affect the economic changes and
how can this
be accounted for when spatially allocating emissions?

How might models that project changes in land-use
and activity locations be improved to better reflect and integrate
lifestyle,
economic production, and public policy factors that
drive vehicle miles traveled? How might spatial redistribution
of activities
and changes in land-use influence investments in transportation
infrastructure and technology? Conversely, how might
investment choices in transportation infrastructure and technology
influence
changes in spatial distribution of activities and land-use
change?

What is the nature of the linkage between growth in
GDP and growth in transportation activity? What types of investments
(e.g., transportation
infrastructure, information technology) and policies
are likely to lead to changes in this relationship? Will the
impacts of present-day
movements such as Smart Growth and the New Urbanism
be significant enough to affect the linkage between transportation
and economic
growth, and, if so, under what circumstances?

Proposals must have a strong analytical focus, as opposed
to solely relying on empirical techniques. The emphasis
should be exploring
which forces and linkages are most important, rather
than producing
an exact forecast of the future. While not required,
EPA strongly urges proposals from teams including a
mix of
physical scientists/engineers
and social scientists.

Proposals must demonstrate the feasibility of new methods
to project regional emissions. The ultimate goal,
not necessarily reached
by the end of research supported under this solicitation,
is
to produce methods for creating plausible North
American emission scenarios for air quality models such as
the Models-3 Community
Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ)
for 50 years into the future. For air quality modeling
purposes, future regional emission scenarios are
needed at the resolution
of 36 km x 36 km grids, with finer resolution desirable
in urban regions or areas of complex terrain.

To the extent possible, future emission scenarios
should be consistent with the continental scale
emissions scenarios from
the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Special Report
Emissions Scenarios (SRES) (http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sres-e.pdf) (PDF, 27pp., 1.15 MB, about PDF)
, but not be overly
restricted to them because of the regional and
local
concentration of anthropogenic emission sources.
Due
to the assumptions
implicit in modeling of emissions, it is important
to document the spatial
and temporal allocation methods developed, and
the basis and uncertainty in future emission
scenarios, including
location and quantities.
It is likely that a range of emission scenarios
will
be needed to realistically allow for uncertainties.

US Environmental Protection Agency (2001) Our Built and Natural
Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions between Transportation,
Land Use, and Environmental Quality. January 2001. EPA 231-R-01-002.

Workshop on Intercontinental Transport and Climatic Effects of
Pollutants, December 3-5, 2001, Research Triangle Park, NC

FUNDING

It is anticipated that a total of approximately $3 million will
be awarded, depending on the availability of funds. EPA anticipates
funding approximately 4-5 grants under this RFA. The projected
award per grant is $150,000 to $250,000 per year total costs,
for up to 3 years. Requests with EPA funding amount in excess
of $750,000,
including direct and indirect costs, will not be considered.

Assume a starting date of no earlier than August 2004 for budgeting
purposes.

ELIGIBILITY

Institutions of higher education and not-for-profit institutions
located in the U.S., and tribal, state and local governments,
are eligible to apply. Profit-making firms are not eligible
to receive grants from EPA under this program.

National laboratories funded by federal agencies (Federally-funded
Research and Development Centers, “FFRDCs”) may not
apply. FFRDC employees may cooperate or collaborate with eligible
applicants within the limits imposed by applicable legislation
and regulations. They may participate in planning, conducting,
and analyzing the research directed by the principal investigator,
but may not direct projects on behalf of the applicant organization
or principal investigator. The principal investigator's institution,
organization, or governance may provide funds through its grant
from EPA to a FFRDC for research personnel, supplies, equipment,
and other expenses directly related to the research. However, salaries
for permanent FFRDC employees may not be provided through this
mechanism.

Federal agencies may not apply. Federal employees are not eligible
to serve in a principal leadership role on a grant, and may not
receive salaries or in other ways augment their agency's appropriations
through grants made by this program. However, federal employees
may interact with grantees so long as their involvement is not
essential to achieving the basic goals of the grant. EPA encourages
interaction between its own laboratory scientists and grant principal
investigators for the sole purpose of exchanging information in
research areas of common interest that may add value to their respective
research activities. This interaction must be incidental to achieving
the goals of the research under a grant. Interaction that is “incidental” does
not involve resource commitments.

The principal investigator’s institution may enter into
an agreement with a federal agency to purchase or utilize unique
supplies or services unavailable in the private sector. Examples
are purchase of satellite data, census data tapes, chemical reference
standards, analyses, or use of instrumentation or other facilities
not available elsewhere. A written justification for federal involvement
must be included in the application, along with an assurance from
the federal agency involved which commits it to supply the specified
service.

Potential applicants who are uncertain of their eligibility should
contact Tom Barnwell in NCER, phone 202-343-9862, email:barnwell.thomas@epa.gov

The need for a sorting code to be used in the application and
for mailing is described in the Standard Instructions for Submitting
a STAR Application. The sorting code for applications submitted
in response to this solicitation is 2004-STAR-B1.

The deadline for receipt of the application by NCER is February
5, 2004.

CONTACTS

Further information, if needed, may be obtained from the EPA official
indicated below.
Darrell Winner, 703-347-0210, winner.darrell@epa.gov